Back during the Metro funding debate Goldy expressed discomfort in relying on increasing sales tax revenues to fund Metro, because sooner or later a recession will come our way and then we’re in a pickle because sales tax revenues come in lower than expected, causing financial issues. I won’t search to find the specific thread but perhaps YLB can work some wayback machine magic and find it for us.

Yet Goldy said nothing about the volatility that WA would experience in capital gains collections if there is another economic disruption. As an example, federal revenues from capital gains decreased from

That’s a 73% decrease in revenues from capital gains taxation, which is far, far, far greater as a percent than the decrease in King County sales tax revenues that occur during a recession. If one were to look at the capital gains taxes paid by the 1% during that period – remember those are the targets of Inslee’s proposed new tax – I suspect the drop in capital gains taxes paid would be even greater. Unless people were in trouble, why would they sell into a falling market, triggering capital gains by ridding themselves of undervalued assets? In fact, the smartest of them kept their powder dry and began buying when the market was at its worst, which is a huge reason why inequality is so much greater now than it was pre-Great Recession.

Now, sales taxes make up significantly greater proportion of Metro funding than proposed capital gains taxes would contribute to WA state funding, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, I’ll admit.

But I think it’s still a reasonable question to ask:

Why is it not acceptable to Goldy to rely on sales tax collections for Metro due to their volatily, and yet he said nothing about the volatility of capital gains tax revenues insofar as increases in state spending are concerned?

1) Inslee has shown more spine than Locke or Gregoire could dream of. Whether that’s due to an unprecedented political opening or not is an open question.

2) Some new revenue to support education is better than NO NEW REVENUE which is all the right will ever want (combined with spending cuts of course).

3) All we here from the always wrong wing is that ALL taxes are volatile. Capital gains, income, sales.. Yes, they all go down during a recession. That’s what rainy day funds are for. The more sources of revenue the less rainy day funds are required.

4) All we here from you and your fellow travellers is DO NOTHING. Climate change? DO NOTHING. Schools underfunded? DO NOTHING. etc., etc. except cut spending of course.

1. You are correct that a rainy day fund is for recessionary times. Please explain to me why it is OK for Inslee to raid it in the next biennium to pay for part of what he wants.

2. Yes, all revenue streams are volatile but capital gains tax revenues are especially volatile. At the time you most need them @4, they aren’t there. Yet Inslee has made them the centerpiece of his funding for new spending.

3. You wrongly insinuate, perhaps intentionally so, that I advocate doing nothing. Read what I wrote in those thread comments. What I wrote is that the increased funding shouldn’t just come from people like me. It should come from people like you, too. Rather than admiring Inslee’s spine you could show you have one by stepping up and helping pay for what he wants.

4. I am stunned that you were able to pen a comment without employing at least three exclamation points. Did part of your keyboard break from overuse?

1) Because Inslee supports doing something as opposed to doing NOTHING.. Quibble with his methods all you want. At least he’s put a plan out there.. And the end result will probably be quite different than what he’s proposed. It’s how the game is played if you didn’t know. Hopefully it will turn out to be something better than NOTHING.

2) Volatile? So?? Again some new revenue is better than NO NEW REVENUE.. Do you get it?? Yet?

3) I see pretty weak support from you for income taxation which is fine. (And as it turns out, a political non-starter in this state.)

And sigh… that same old tired argument that people whose incomes and standards of living haven’t changed or stagnated for decades should take more pain all so the winners from Reaganomics should just feel a bit of a sting.

If you’re so disturbed about how the less well off has “skated” while the better off have paid through the nose – have you have thought about how much right wing politics have bought off lower income folks with everything from EITC, child and education credits to the current bracket structure?

4) LMAO @ you Bob!!!! Read Hot Air lately about the good news from the klowservative utopia of Kansas???? How do like that 250k jobs promises by Walker? HAHAHAHA!!!

@1 Because he’s for the poor. As part of the power elite, his job is to instruct the poor on keeping their proper place, viz., working graveyard, weekend, and holiday shifts to line the pockets of their capitalist masters.

@4 “Yet Goldy said nothing about the volatility that WA would experience in capital gains collections”

Volatility? Are you kidding? We can count on capital gains rolling in for the capitalist class as surely as it rains in Seattle in December. The rich making money from their investments is one of the few things in this world that’s a sure thing. Wage income, on the other hand, is volatile as we’ve seen in recent years.

Also, I love the example you use — a once-in-a-lifetime economic meltdown, the worst in 80 years — as if there’s another one like it just around the corner. Attaboy Bob! Way to game a debate!

Two NYPD cops sitting in a patrol car in the Bronx were assassinated this afternoon by a shooter who ran into a subway and committed suicide. No other details, and no suggestion of terrorism or a link to the Eric Garner uproar, at this time.

@7 If you bought stocks 2 months after Bush took office, you lost your ass. If you bought stocks 2 months after Obama took office, you made a killing. As a greedy golddigging mercenary capitalist of the most avaricious sort, I want Democrats running things purely as a matter of aggrandizing self-interest.

@8 “1. You are correct that a rainy day fund is for recessionary times. Please explain to me why it is OK for Inslee to raid it in the next biennium to pay for part of what he wants.”

You think we’re in boom times now?

“2. Yes, all revenue streams are volatile but capital gains tax revenues are especially volatile. At the time you most need them @4, they aren’t there. Yet Inslee has made them the centerpiece of his funding for new spending.”

Got any empirical data to back up this horseshit?

“3. You wrongly insinuate, perhaps intentionally so, that I advocate doing nothing. Read what I wrote in those thread comments. What I wrote is that the increased funding shouldn’t just come from people like me.”

Yes it should, because people like you aren’t paying their fair share.

“It should come from people like you, too.”

If you mean me, Roger Rabbit, I have to plead nolo contendere, because quite frankly as a stock market capitalist I’m getting away with bloody murder when it comes to not paying taxes. I pay ZERO taxes on my capital gains and dividends, and it’s perfectly legal, thanks to Republicans!

“Rather than admiring Inslee’s spine you could show you have one by stepping up and helping pay for what he wants.”

After you, my dear Watson.

“4. I am stunned that you were able to pen a comment without employing at least three exclamation points. Did part of your keyboard break from overuse?”

Steve, if there was no reason to suspect a linkage, then why did Al Sharpton immediately contact the families of Brown and Garner as soon as the news broke? I mean, police officers die @28 in the line of duty awfully frequently, so what was different about yesterday’s killings that made Sharpton react the way he did?

I’m pretty sure that when the second plane hit a tower on 9/11, just at that time there was no objective evidence that there was intent to convey a message. Merely an unfortunate coincidence.

“what was different about yesterday’s killings that made Sharpton react the way he did”

Off the rails already. What was different about the NYC and Las Vegas murders of two officers that left Fox News and yourself to react with complete silence about the link to Cliven Bundy and Fox News?

What was different about the NYC and Las Vegas murders of two officers that left Fox News and yourself to react with complete silence about the link to Cliven Bundy and Fox News?

1. Ignorance. 2. Shame.

Both side have their total fucking idiots, Steve. Bundy is one on the right. Some shit I see and just shut myself off from. Whatever happened in Nevada was that kind of shit. So I have some memory of a dispute over grazing rights and payment for same, a strong memory that Bundy is a horrible racist who made that quite clear, and that thereafter he became persona non grata to the mainstream right. Whatever else there might be, feel free to fill me in. I plead ignorance.

I’m as embarrassed and ashamed that my side hitched its wagon to the likes of Cliven Bundy as you should be that an Al Sharpton-supported march in NYC devolved into “What do we want?” “Dead cops!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” in the very, very recent past.

Bronx, New York (My9NJ) – The rap video “Hands Up!” featuring rappers Maino and Uncle Murda has gone viral, but it’s the videos message that has many people up in arms. The video basically encourages people to kill police officers in retribution to what happened to Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The video portrays the recurring image of an actor dressed as a police officer with two guns pointed at his head, and some of the lyrics even encourage that type of behavior.

Republican politicians and police union fanatics are wasting no time trying to turn yesterday’s police murders by a convicted felon and prison gang member into a political weapon against Democratic office holders and peaceful protesters against police brutality. Fuck these assholes for their repulsive, divisive, incendiary rhetoric. They’re doing their fellow cops no favors by dividing the country into “you’re either for us or against us” camps. It merely confirms the already aroused public’s worst impressions of the police.

@34 “I’d actually be OK with a Clinton presidency and a GOP-held Congress, one house or two”

It’s good to hear you’ve mentally and emotionally prepared yourself for what you’re probably going to get. Except if you think the GOP has a snowball’s chance of hanging onto the Senate in 2016, you haven’t looked at a map.

Yeah, Bob, but your side has a lot more of them. At least you realize Cliven Bundy is a criminal and his supporters are terrorists. Very few of the neanderthals on the right have advanced that far out of their caves.

It’s not like there aren’t any dickwads on the left. But I don’t come here to talk about them. I come here to give shit to the right-wing dickwads who troll these threads, among whom I regard Solar Power Bob better than most.

Caught a segment on Melissa Harris Perry about the economy could be moving from jobs and careers with unions, protections, company health care, vacations and 401Ks where you have employment for at least a two week notice to the Uber economy of rootless freelancers where the serfs have to hustle every moment, where you have an income stream for only as long as you have a task, like an Uber fare. This Uber economy gives a pittance more to the worker and in return, strips off the infrastructure costs of vacations, and regulations and insurance and pensions and health care and takes the difference for themselves. It’s not like the uber serfs can realistically charge individually to cover their infrastructure like Rabbit has talked about the $200 an hour waitress, unless they unionize. So what do we do? Go to a fully socialist economy where one can get all the social infrastructure, like health care and pensions from the government at a cost of extremely high, and extremely hated taxes, or to a Somalia economy where the .0001% live like emperors and the rest, well, work like uber serfs. Granted, I know HA does not always have the capacity to have a thoughtful intelligent dialogue on the changing economy, but I though I’d bring up the question.

Republican politicians and police union fanatics are wasting no time trying to turn yesterday’s police murders by a convicted felon and prison gang member into a political weapon against Democratic office holders …

Really, RR, from your immediate failed effort to dissociate the NYPD assassinations from the Eric Garner tragedy @ 16 to your failure to realize that your side did virtually the same thing after Tuscon with far less material to work with, I’m not sure how you can end up looking more stupid.

Fortunately, I know you’ll take the bait rather than the advice @ 22 I previously gave you.

In defense of RR, he’s not alone in his failure to recognize the similarities to Tuscon:

“To link the criminal insanity of a lone gunman to the peaceful protests and aspirations of many people across the country, including the attorney general, the mayor and even the president, is simply not fair,” NAACP President Cornell William Brooks said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Brooks is right, of course, although while it similarly wasn’t fair to link the actions of a mentally disturbed individual to Palin and Second Amendment supporters, Democrats spared no mercy when they thought it was to their advantage.

You’d have a point if Democrats ran political ads portraying crosshairs painted over their opponents. But they didn’t. Only rightwing assholes do that. And let’s not forget the rightwing assholes who aimed real guns at law enforcement officers at the Bundy Ranch. These are the kind of people you’re fellow traveling with, Bob.

@58 “But with Brown, y’all knew from nearly the first instant that he was a thuggish bully and criminal.”

Assuming, arguendo, he was … are you arguing that justifies the police carrying out street executions? And even if we assume the cop was justified in Brown’s case, where does this argument get you in the Eric Garner case? Or the Tamir Rice case? Or the John Crawford case?

I’m not going around saying this police assassination was a false flag by rightwingers to discredit the protests against police brutality. I ought to, because that sort of conspiracy theory is right up their alley, but I can’t make myself stoop to their level.

“As this whole Michael Brown/Eric Garner thing blows up in your faces, you libbies must be wondering how it all went so wrong.”

Good grief. The farcical grand jury wasn’t a “blows up in your faces” thing. With what’s been revealed about Witness #40, McCullough should consider himself damned lucky if he doesn’t get his own indictment handed to him.

As for Garner, I believe my own eyes. I see what the fuck went down.

I don’t cotton to shooting cops or any other acts of violence, but I certainly do understand why blacks in this country are fucking pissed off.

“he was a thuggish bully and criminal”

Want to see the reason why blacks are fed up and angry, Bob? Just look in the fucking mirror.

Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, a former cop, has asked for a moratorium on Eric Garner protests until the two police officers slain yesterday are laid to rest. That seems like a very reasonable request and I think it should be honored.

The EPA Tier 4 deadline is days away, and for locomotive production, it will be interesting. EMD will not make the deadline, and their Muncie, Indiana plant will survive for about 2 years(they hope to have a compliant engine by 2017) on the order backlog for the SD70ACe that meets Tier 3, exports, and rebuilds. It’s interesting, because Tier 4 dates back to the Bush Administration!http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/c.....ormat=true

I have heard that EMD might dust off stroke design that they abandoned back when General Motors owned the company, in the 1990’s. They tried it out with a 6000hp version, but it did not sell enough, and then went back to the 710 series engine, a two stroke engine.

For General Electric, it’s a different story, they were ready. In fact, the order book is filling up, and some workers laid off in the wake of the decision to shift domestic locomotive production to Fort Worth from Erie, after the union would not agree to contract concessions, have been called back to work. The plan was to keep Erie producing export locomotives.http://www.goerie.com/article/.....-for-erie#

EvergreenRailfan, I’m not one to comment much on mass transportation, bus or rail, but I find your posts on the subject to be very interesting and informative.

My only association with public transportation, other than being a bus passenger, is to have once been a friend and business partner of the late Elmer E. Van Ness, the Washington State Engineer of the Year in 1970, awarded for being instrumental in saving the Seattle Transit electric trolley system in the late 1960s. In appreciation for his tireless efforts, Seattle Transit gave him a scale model of a Seattle electric trolley which Elmer proudly displayed on his fireplace mantle. I’m very proud to have known that guy.

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